In the wake of what political and public discourses call a ‘migrant crisis’ there has been a turn towards participatory arts-based methods as tools to co-produce knowledge to address and represent the diverse challenges and the human experience of migration in the 21st century. These methods improve access to marginalised /underrepresented groups and enable researchers to generate different kinds of data and information. This shift has transformed research about this phenomenon and the experience of migration as migrants have more of an agentive role in shaping the research project and its outcomes. Some of these projects manage to support migrants to make the transition from participant to collaborator and co-producer by using poetry or visual arts. However, in the case of the majority, the voice of the western academic narrates the knowledge and experiences stemming from this collaborative research work.

Although the reasons for these are manifold (some potentially related to the ability and willingness of participants to engage in more laborious ways, or funding limitation), there is scope to support migrant participants in becoming narrators of their story and make their experience know to the culture of their arrival. In fact, this type of support will directly contribute to a more nuanced understanding of this experience whilst simultaneously enabling these marginalised voices to occupy space in the public discourse around this phenomenon, to become producers of knowledge and authors of work alongside the researchers managing such projects, and potentially develop into independent voices contributing to the body of knowledge and work on the topic.

What will the project involve? 

This project aims to bring together researchers and community artists and facilitators in order to discuss and develop ways of working with migrant participants which enhance their role in shaping the research narrative by supporting and encouraging creative writing. In this way migrants are supported to become active collaborators, authors and co-producers, have more agency over the research that will be produced with and by them rather than about them. This aims to empower them to make their voices and experiences heard as well as produce a more nuanced and inclusive discourse about the human experience of migration in the 21st century.

The project will organise two half-day workshops which will bring together two community artists/facilitators, engagement experts and two academics from the Faculty of Arts, Modern Languages and Theatre respectively, to discuss and develop a toolkit for working with migrant participants in ways that support creative writing and storytelling in research projects.

The workshops will be guided by the following questions:

• What participatory arts-based methods support migrants in getting involved with the outcomes of participatory research projects and make space for their experience to be voiced by them?
• What agency is afforded to migrants in the narratives created about their experience in these projects?
• How can we develop participatory arts-based methods that encourage migrants to voice their experience by supporting creative writing and storytelling?

These workshops aim to combine formal academic knowledge with the community-based creative knowledge to provide answers to the questions above. The process will involve time for reflection, research, knowledge exchange, and experimentation with workshop practices and techniques. This will enable the team to develop and refine a series of methodologies and practices (a toolkit) for research projects involving migrant participants which encourage a shared production and authorship of knowledge and a more inclusive research practice overall.

Who are the team and what do they bring?

• Dana Lungu (Modern Languages, University of Bristol) is a lecturer in French with a focus on Early Modern French Tragedy. In her approach she uses ethics and psychoanalysis to explore the psychodynamic of characters.
• Francesco Bentivenga (Theatre, University of Bristol) is a lecturer of Digital Theatre and Creative Industries at the University of Bristol, a musician, and a theatre practitioner. Their interests move between voice studies and philosophy of technology, focusing primarily on AI, artificial voices, posthumanism, techno-feminism and contemporary queer studies.
• Carlota Matos (Borderlands) is a Portuguese theatre and performance artist based in Bristol. She was commissioned by Projekt Europa to develop an idea for co-created work with local communities, in a collaboration with Royal & Derngate. Prior to this project she was finishing an Arts Council grant 'Developing Your Creative Practice', scaling up her practice including a focus on working with migrants, ethics and facilitating around language barriers.
• Holly Wallis (Bristol Old Vic) is the Heritage Manager and participatory artist Bristol Old Vic. Holly organized the Homemade project in collaboration with Ashley Community and Housing which involved working with migrant women on preserving cultural memories through food.
• Mia Silva is a Brazilian theatre creator, dancer, director, and facilitator based in Bristol. She is part of Projekt Elevate (Bristol Old Vic) a scheme supporting migrant theatre makers to develop bold ideas for co-created work. She has delivered workshops in clowning, physical theatre, acting, pre-expression, and movement for adults of all abilities.

What were the results?

The team intend to use the toolkit as part of a wider project ‘Translating Médée’ for the 21st century’ which aims to use a French classical version of Médée as a vehicle and springboard to encourage migrant women to make their voices heard through creative writing and storytelling leading to an adaptation of this play. These workshops will help shape and develop the application for a larger funding scheme.

Furthermore, the wider ‘Translating Médée’ for the 21st century’ project will be an opportunity to put this toolkit into practice and to future-proof these methods in light of the experience of working with migrant women to co-produce an adaptation.

The final aims of the project are:

1. to provide researchers, facilitators and creatives with a toolkit to be used when working with migrant participants in order to support them in voicing/narrating their experience;
2. to enable migrant participants to take co-ownership of the research produced with them and to acquire a more agentive role in these projects.

The toolkit will be made available free of charge on the websites of the Theatre department and School of Modern Languages as well as Bristol Old Vic and the websites of the project’s creative partners.